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BISHOP POTTERS ADDRESS, 

' CENTENNIAL OF 
WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION, 

ST. PAUL'S CHURCH. NEW YORK. 



Also Letter from Bishop Huntington. 




..10 1890 



NEW YORK : 

Civil Service Reform Association, 

33 and 35 Liberty St. 



Vashingtoniarm 

ET3 i z 
.63 









ADDRESS OF THE 

RT, REV, HENRY C. POTTER, D.D.. 

AT THE CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION SERVICE 

OF WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION, ST. 

PAUL'S CHURCH, NEW YORK, 

APRIL 30, 1889. 

[Reprinted from the New York Evening Post.] 

One hundred years ago there knelt within 
these walls a man to whom, above all others in 
its history, this nation is indebted. An Eng- 
lishman by race and lineage, he incarnated in 
his own person and character every best trait 
and attribute that have made the Angle-Saxon 
name a glory to its children and a terror to 
its enemies throughout the world. But he was 
not so much an Englishman that, when the 
time came for him to be so, he was not even 
more an American ; and in all that he was and 
did, a patriot so exalted, and a leader great and 
wise, that what men called him when he came 
here to be inaugurated as the first President of 
the United States the civilized world has not 



since then ceased to call him-the Father of his 

We are here this morning to thank God for 
so great a gift to this people, to commemorate 
the incidents of which this day is the one 
hundredth anniversary, and to recognize the 
responsibilities which a century so eventful has 
laid upon us. 

And we are nere of all other places, first of 
all, with preeminent appropriateness. I know 
not how it may be with those to whom all sa- 
cred things and places are matters ,of equal 
indifference, but surely to those of us with whom 
it is otherwise it cannot be without profound 
and pathetic import that when the first 
President of the Republic had taken upon him, 
by virtue of his solemn oath, pronounced in the 
sight of the people, the heavy burden of its 
Chief Magistracy, he turned straightway to 
these walls, and kneeling in yonder pew, asked 
God for strength to keep his promise to the 
nation and his oath to Him. This was no un- 
wonted home to him, nor to a large propor- 
tion of those eminent men who, with 
him, were associated in framing the 
Constitution of these United States. Chil-. 
dren of the same spiritual Mother and 
nurtured in the same Scriptural faith 
and order, they were wont to carry 
with them into their public deliberation some- 
thing of the same reverent and conservative 
spirit which they had learned within these 
walls, and of which the youthful and ill-regu- 
lated fervors of the new-born republic often be- 



trayed its need. And he, their leader and 
chief, while singularly without cant, or for- 
malism, or pretence in his religious habits, was 
penetrated, as we know well, by a profound 
sense of the dependence of the republic upon a 
Guidance other than that of man, and of his 
own need of a strength and courage and wis- 
dom greater than he had in himself. 

And so, with inexpressible tenderness and 
reverence, we find ourselves thinking of him 
here, kneeling to ask such gifts, and then ris- 
ing to go forth to his great tasks with mien so 
august and majestic that Fisher Ames, who sat 
beside him in this chapel, wrote, " I was pre- 
sent in the pew with the President, and must 
assure you that, after making all deductions 
for the delusions of our fancy in regard to cha- 
racters, I still think of him with more venera- 
tion than for any other person." So we think 
of him. I say : and indeed it is impossible to 
think otherwise. The modern student of 
history has endeavored to tell us how it was 
that the service in this chapel which we are 
striving to reproduce came about. The record 
is not without obscurity, but of one thing we 
may be sure — that to him who, of that goodly 
company who a hundred years ago gathered 
within these wails, was chief, it was no empty 
form, no decorous affectation. Events nad been 
too momentous, the hand of a Heavenly Provi- 
dence had been too plain, for him, and the men 
who were grouped about him then, to misread 
the one or mistake the other. The easy levity with 
which their children's children debate the facts 



of God, and Duty, and Eternal Destiny were as 
impossible to them as Faith and Reverence seem 
to be, or to be in danger of becoming, to many of 
us. And so we may be very sure that, when 
they gathered here, the air was hushed, and 
hearts as well as heads were bent in honest sup- 
plication. 

For, after all, their great experiment was 
then, in truth, but just beginning. The memo- 
rable days and deeds which had preceded it— 
the struggle for independence, the delicate and, 
in many respects, more difficult struggle for 
Union, the harmonizing of the various and 
often apparently conflicting interests of 
rival and remote States and sec- 
tions, the formulating and adopting of 
the National Constitution— all these were after 
all but introductory and preparatory to the 
great experiment itself. It has been suggested 
that we may wisely see in the event which we 
celebrate to day an illustration of those great 
principles upon which all governments rest, of 
the continuity of the Chief Magistracy, of the 
corporate life of the nation as embodied in its 
Executive, of the transmission, by due succes- 
sion, of authority, and the like; of all of which, 
doubtless, in the history of the last 100 years 
we have an interesting and on the whole in- 
spiring example. 

But it is a somewhat significant tact tnat it 
is not along lines such as t hese that that en- 
thusiasm which has flamed out during these 
recent days and weeks, as this anniversary has 
approached, has seemed to move. The one 



thing that has, I imagine, amazed a good many 
cynical and pessimistic people among us is the 
way in which the ardor of a great people's love 
and homage and gratitude has kindled, not 
before the image of a mechanism, but 
of a man. It has been felt 
with an unerring intuition which has, 
once and again and again in human history, 
been the attribute of the people as distinguish- 
ed from the doctrinaires, the theorists, the sys- 
tem-makers, that that which makes it worth 
while to commemorate the inauguration of 
George Washington is not merely that it is 
the consummation of the nation's struggle to- 
wards organic life, not merely that by the ini- 
tiation of its Chief Executive it set in opera- 
tion that Constitution which Mr. Gladstone has 
declared is " the most perfect instrument which 
the wit of man has devised " ; but that it cele- 
brates the beginning of an Administration 
which, by its lofty and stainless integrity, by 
its absolute superiority to selfish or secondary 
motives, by the rectitude of its daily conduct 
in the face of whatsoever threats, blandish- 
ments, or combinations, rather than by the os- 
tentatious phariseeism of its professions, has 
taught this nation and the world for ever what 
the Christian ruler of a Christian people ought 
to be. 

I yield to no man in my veneration for the 
men who framed the compact under which 
these States are bound together. No one can 
easily exaggerate their services or the value of 
that which they wrought out. But, after all, 



we may not forget to-day, that the thing 
which they made was a dead and not a living 
thing. It had no power to interpret itself, to 
apply itself, to execute itself. Splendid as it 
was in its complex and forecasting mechanism, 
instinct as it was, in one sense, with a noble 
wisdom, with a lai'ge-visioned statesman- 
ship, with a matchless adaptability to un- 
tried emergencies, it was, nevertheless, no dif- 
ferent in another aspect from one of those 
splendid specimens of naval architecture which 
throng our wharves to-day, and which, with 
every best contrivance of human art and skill, 
with capacities of progress which newly 
amaze us every day, are but as impotent, dead 
matter, save as the brain and hand of man 
shall summon and command them. "The ship 
of state," we say. Yes; but it is the cool and 
competent mastery at the helm of that, as of 
every other ship, which shall, under God, de- 
termine the glory or the ignominy of the voy- 
age. 

Never was there a truth which more surely 
needed to be spoken ! A generation which 
vaunts its descent from the founders of the Re- 
public seems largely to be in danger of forget- 
ting their preeminent distinction. They were 
few in numbers, they were poor in worldly pos- 
sessions — the sum of the fortune of the richest 
among them would afford a tine theme for the 
scorn of the plutocrat of to-day ; but they had 
an invincible confidence in the truth of those 
principles in which the foundations of the 
Republic had been laid, and they had 



9 

an unselfish purpose to maintain them. 
The conception of the National Government as 
a huge machine, existing mainly for the pur- 
pose of rewarding partisan service — this was a 
conception so alien to the character and con- 
duct of Washington and his associates that it 
seems grotesque even to speak of it. It would 
be interesting to imagine the first President of 
the United States confronted with some one 
who had ventured to approach him upon the 
basis of what are now commonly kuown 
as "practical politics." But the con- 
ception is impossible. The loathing, 
the outraged majesty with which he would 
have bidden such a creature to begone is fore- 
shadowed by the gentle dignity with which, 
just before his inauguration, replying to one 
who had the strongest claims upon his friend- 
ship, and who had applied to him during the 
progress of the " Presidential campaign," as 
we should say, for the promise of an appoint- 
ment to office, he wrote : " In touching upon the 
more delicate part of your letter, the communi- 
cation of which fills me with real concern, I 
will deal Avith you with all that frankness 
which is due to friendship, and which I wish 
should be a characteristic feature of my con- 
duct through life. . . . Should it be my 
fate to administer, the Government I will go to 
the Chair under no preengagement of any 
kind or nature whatever. And when in it, I 
will, to the best of my judgment, discharge the 
duties of the office with that impartiality and 
zeal for the public good which ought never to 



10 

suffer connections of blood or friendship to 
have the least sway on decisions of a public 
nature." 

On this high level moved the first President 
of the Republic. To it must we who are the 
heirs of her sacred interests be not unwilling to 
ascend, if we are to guard our glorious heri- 
tage ! 

And this all the more because the perils which 
confront us are so much graver and more por- 
tentous than those which then impended. There 
is (if we are not afraid of the wholesome 
medicine that there is in consenting to 
see it) an element of infinite sadness in the 
effort which we are making to-day. Ransacking 
the annals of our fathers as we have been do- 
ing for the last few months, a busy and well- 
meaning assiduity would fain reproduce the 
scene, the scenery, the situation, of an hundred 
years ago ! Vain and impotent endeavor ! It 
is as though out of the lineaments of living 
men we would fain produce another Washing- 
ton. We may disinter the vanished draperies, 
we may revive the stately minuet, 
we may rehabilitate the old scenes, 
but the march of a century cannot 
be halted or reversed, and the enormous 
change in the situation can neither be dis- 
guised nor ignored. Then we were, though not 
all of us sprung from one nationality, practically 
one people. Now that steadily deteriorating 
process against whose dangers a great thinker 
of our own generation warned his countrymen 
just fifty years ago, goes on, on every hand, 



11 

apace. " The constant importation," wrote the 
author of "The Weal of Nations" "as now, 
in this country, of the lowest orders 
of people from abroad to dilute 
the quality of our natural manhood, is a sad 
and beggarly prostitution of the noblest gift 
ever conferred on a people. Who shall respect 
a people who do not respect their own blood ? 
And how shall a national spirit, or any de- 
terminate and proportionate character, arise 
out of so many low-bred associations and 
coarse-grained temperaments, imported from 
every clime ? It was (indeed) in keeping that 
Pan, who was the son of everybody, was the 
ugliest of the gods." 

And again: Another enormous difference be- 
tween this day and that of which it is the an- 
niversary, is seen in the enormous difference in 
the nature and influence of the forces that de- 
termine our national and political destiny. 
Then, ideas ruled the hour. To-day, there are 
indeed ideas 1 hat rule our hour, but they must 
be merchantable ideas. The growth of wealth, 
the prevalence of luxury, the massing of large 
material forces, which by their very ex- 
istence are a standing menace to the free- 
dom and integrity of the individual, the in- 
finite swagger of our American speech and 
manners, mistaking bigness for greatness, and 
sadly confounding gain and godliness— all this 
is a contrast to the austere simplicity, the un- 
purcbasable integrity of the first days and first 
men of our republic, which makes it impossible 
to reproduce to-day either the temper or the 



12 

conduct of our fathers. As we turn the pages 
backward, and come upon the story of that 
30th of April in the year of our Lord 1789, 
there is a certain stateliness in the 
air, a certain ceremoniousness in the manners, 
which we have banished long ago. We have 
exchanged the Washingtonian dignity for the 
Jeffersonian simplicity which was, in truth, 
only another name for the Jacksonian vul- 
garity. And what have w 7 e gotten in exchange 
for it ? In the elder States and dynasties they 
had the trappings of royalty and the pomp and 
splendor of the king's person to fill men's 
hearts with loyalty. Well, we have dis- 
pensed with the old titular dignities. Let 
us take care that we do not part with 
that tremendous force for which they stood ! 
If there be not titular royalty, all the more 
need is there for personal royalty. If there is 
to be no nobility of descent, all the more indis- 
pensable is it that there should be nobility of 
ascent— a character in them that bear rule, so 
fine and high and pure, that as men come 
within the circle of its influence, they involun- 
tarily pay homage to that which is the one pre- 
eminent distinction, the Royalty of Virtue! 

And that it was, men and brethren, which, 
as we turn to-day and look at him who, 
as on this morning just an hundred years ago, 
became the servant of the Republic in becom- 
ing the Chief Ruler of its people, we must 
needs own, conferred upon him his divine right 
to rule. All the more, therefore, because the 
circumstances of his era were so little like 



13 

our own, we need to recall his image and, 
if we may, not only to commemorate, 
but to reproduce his virtues. The 
traits which in him shone preeminent 
as our own Irving has described them, "Firm- 
ness, sagacity, an immovable justice, courage 
that never faltered, and most of all truth that 
disdained all artifices " — these are characteris- 
tics in her leaders of which the nation was 
never in more dire need than now. 

And so we come and kneel at this ancient 
and hallowed shrine where once he knelt, and 
ask that God would graciously vouchsafe them. 
Here in this holy house we find the witness of 
that one invisible force which, because it alone 
can rule the conscience, is destined, one 
day, to rule the world. Out from airs 
dense and foul with the coarse passions and 
coarser rivalries of self-seeking men, we turn 
aside as from the crowd aud glare of some vul- 
gar highway, swarming with pushing and ill- 
• bred throngs, and tawdry and clamorous with 
bedizened booths and noisy speech, in some 
cool and shaded wood where, straight to hea- 
ven, some majestic oak lifts its tali 
form, its roots embedded deep among 
the unchanging rocks, its upper branch- 
es sweeping the upper airs, and 
holding high commune with the stars; and, 
as we think of him for whom we here thank 
God, we say, " Such an one, in native majesty 
he was a ruler, wise and strong and fearless, in 
the sight of God and men, because by the en- 
nobling grace of Gcd he had learned, first of 



I 



14 

all, to conquer every mean and selfish and 

self-seeking aim, and so to rule himself !" For 

— What are numbers knit 
By force or custom ? Man who man would be 
Must rule the empire of himself — in it 
Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
Of vanquished will, quelling the anarchy 
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. 

Such was the hero, leader, ruler, patriot, 
whom we gratefully remember on this day. 
We may not reproduce his age. his young en- 
vironment, nor him. But none the less may we 
rejoice that once he lived and led this people, 
" led them and ruled them prudently," like 
him, that Kingly Ruler and Shepherd of whom 
the Psalmist sang, " with all his jtywer." God 
give us the grace to prize his grand example, 
and, as we may in our more modest measure, 
to reproduce his virtues. 



A LETTER FROM BISHOP HUNTINGTON. 

[Reprinted from the Mail and Express.] 
You ask me for an opinion on George Wash- 
ington. It is that if Washington were now liv- 
ing in the United States, he would find the po- 
litical atmosphere offensive and the political 
morality intolerable ; that he would be so far 
superior to the motives and influences which 
prevail in the administration of the Gov- 
ernment as to be virtually isolated ; that he 
would steadily refuse to give pledges of 
party allegiance or in any way to prostitute 
public trusts to private advantage, and least 
of all would reward corruption in elections 
with promotions or honors; that he would hold 
unscrupulous and impertinent party " bosses" 
in contempt ; would yield nothing of favor or 
advantage to corporate or individual wealth, 
and, as well by the elevation of his manners 
as by the righteous independence of his 
judgment, would stand apart from the 
mercenary seekers of popularity and 
place who obtrude themselves where 
they have no rights by character, learning, or 
disinterested patriotism; and, therefore, that, 
in spite of the commanding genius in states- 
manship and in soldiership and in the wisdom 
of rule which have set him foremost among 
the founders of States, he would probably be 
at this day ineligible to the Presidency, to 
Congress, or to any office controlled by politi- 
cal machinery. F. D. Huntington. 



